


Follow You Down

by Miss_M



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Canon, Rare Pairings, Unrequited Love, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-03-30 21:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13960806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: Arthur understood fear as a part of the human survival instinct – one of evolution’s gifts – but Mal saw fear as an inconvenience. She worked around fear or simply ignored it, for she wanted to build.





	Follow You Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CurareChai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurareChai/gifts).



> I own nothing.

“Arthur,” Mal said, “I’m going to shoot you in the stomach now.”

With the eye-blink speed at which things changed in a dream, a Glock appeared in her hand. She pointed it at Arthur’s midriff.

“Wait,” Arthur said. 

Later he would wonder why he didn’t produce a gun too, only to abandon that line of thought when his mind balked at the very idea of shooting Mal. Even in a dream. 

“We didn’t discuss this. Why?” He was babbling. He never babbled. 

“To see if you will feel pain,” Mal said, as calm and reasonable as ever, and pulled the trigger.

The sound was as loud in the dream as it would have been in an enclosed space in the waking world – _the mind filling in details of the dreamscape with memories_ , a part of Arthur’s mind filed away pedantically while the rest of him writhed in agony, clutching his stomach. He could feel the sticky blood slicking his hands, the tissue tearing sharply inside him. He’d never been shot in Afghanistan, so how could he remember so much visceral detail?

Mal’s hand on his cheek was soft and warm. She’d never touched him before, except once to shake his hand briefly, so how could he remember in so much sensory detail how she felt?

Arthur looked up from where he was curled up on the floor, into Mal’s serene face, her eyes more grey than blue.

“I’m sorry for not warning you in advance,” she said. “And thank you.” 

Then she shot him in the head. 

*

When Arthur met Mal Cobb, she was called Mal Escher and she was branching out from working with her father to set up an independent research team. One of her assistants had contacted Arthur, alongside other recently discharged vets who’d participated in the Army’s dream R&D program. 

“You showed very high aptitude for navigating dream space,” Mal – Dr. Escher – had told him, grey-blue eyes on his file. 

“Really, ma’am? What’s the metric for that?” Now that he was no longer a staff sergeant, Arthur could give his smart mouth free rein.

Mal fixed him with her gaze. Arthur did not wilt, but he sat up straighter. 

“I am offering you the opportunity to participate in the development of entire worlds, staff sergeant. Not just a new technology, but a new way of handling reality. I realize the transition back to civilian life may be complicated, but fewer quips would be appreciated.”

Arthur lifted his chin, to signal that her blow had not landed ( _it had_ ). “You haven’t made me an offer yet, ma’am, and I haven’t said yes or no.” 

Mal cocked her head. “If I did not wish to work with you, you wouldn’t have made it as far as that chair. And please drop the ‘ma’am’ while you’re at it.” 

She stood, walked around her desk, and offered Arthur her hand ( _slim fingers, no ring_ ).

“Mal,” she said, smiling now. 

Arthur stood, took her hand, and gave her his name.

“Tell me, Arthur,” she said, rolling the R’s like she was tasting his name. “Have you ever been shot?”

*

Arthur had been a soldier. He understood fear as a part of the human survival instinct – one of evolution’s gifts – but Mal saw fear as an inconvenience. She worked around fear or simply ignored it, for she wanted to build.

“Best student I ever had,” Miles Escher told Arthur once. “I doubt I’ll be so lucky as to teach anyone else as gifted as my daughter at manipulating reality.”

*

After she’d shot him without forewarning, to wound rather than to wake up, Mal began to treat Arthur more like a coworker and less like an employee. 

( _He had nearly quit that time, and his fight with Mal over her unprofessional behavior had concluded in Arthur displaying extreme unprofessionalism too – he’d seized Mal by the arms and kissed her. She’d stood motionless till Arthur let her go, then told him to be on time the next day and left._ )

“I’ve never heard of limbo,” Arthur told Mal after she explained, with barely suppressed excitement ( _flushed cheeks, shining eyes_ ), what she wanted to try next. 

“That’s because I discovered it,” Mal said with no trace of either vanity or false modesty. “Can you imagine, Arthur? Unconstructed dream space, just waiting to be shaped and _used_.” 

Arthur remained skeptical – for one thing, he could not imagine what practical purpose limbo would serve – but he followed Mal down to it. 

He always followed Mal, Alice unable to resist the white rabbit’s magnetic pull. 

Arthur’s mouth and nose were full of water, but Mal was pulling him upright, out of the surf. They stood on a sandy beach at the foot of tall white cliffs that looked like either limestone or cement. 

“I thought you said the dream space was unconstructed this far down,” Arthur shouted over the boom of the waves. 

“It is,” Mal shouted back, pushing wet hair from her face. “I built this from memory, to give us a landing stage and a place to start from. There’s no up or down in pure id, it gets disorienting. We can do so much, Arthur.” Her cheeks were flushed again. 

Arthur walked a few steps up the beach, away from Mal and the waves sucking at their ankles. It felt as real as anything in dreams ever did: the soft crunch of wet sand, the wind on his wet skin, even sea birds darting in and out of caves ( _or empty windows_ ) on the cliff face.

He looked back at Mal. “You built this. You came down here alone.” 

“Yes. Of course.” 

“Mal, no.” 

He came back to her, but the look on her face, like an iron grill closing, stopped him from taking hold of her shoulders, her arms. Her face forced Arthur into sounding more hesitant than he wanted, than the situation warranted: “You mustn’t do that anymore.”

“I know you mean well,” Mal said, cold as the wind and the sea, “and that it’s all done out of tenderness, but sometimes you presume too much, Arthur.”

*

Totems were Mal’s idea. She’d demonstrated her spinning top to Arthur, then told him to find one for himself. He came back with a pocket-sized spirit level – quiet, unobtrusive, reliable.

“Like you,” Mal smiled. “Let me see it.”

Arthur handed it to her, and she placed it on top of a stack of books. Perfectly level. 

Mal looked at him, eyebrows arched high. “Arthur, really. Quel âne.” 

He was a _donkey_? Arthur was briefly puzzled. Then he was blushing. Then, uncharacteristically, he tried to argue with her. “Why would _you_ want to deceive me in a dream?”

“That’s not the point,” Mal said, a bit of her father’s didacticism in her tone. “What if you were to meet a projection that looks like me in a mutual acquaintance’s dream? You don’t know what might happen.” She held out his spirit level. “Find something else, and trust a little less.” 

*

 _What was she like in real life?_ another woman asked Arthur later. Another ambitious architect intoxicated with the prospect of pure creation.

 _She was lovely_ , Arthur replied, knowing that was nowhere near enough to describe Mal. She _had been_ lovely, and hard-working, and single-minded, and impossible to sway once she’d made up her mind, and completely ruthless. As ruthless as some of the most efficient killers Arthur had known in the Army.

*

They started to venture into limbo more and more often – not often enough for Mal’s liking, yet Arthur insisted on breaks in the waking world, remained skeptical about the use of it all. Mal built, and Arthur helped. He was reliable and efficient when she showed him what she wanted done, but his heart was not in it. 

“Where are you?” Mal demanded once, exasperated enough to let it show. 

“I don’t know,” Arthur said. She started to turn away, but he kept talking. “I don’t know what to do, Mal. I think we’re lost, and I don’t know how to help you.”

Her laugh was ugly, a scratching noise on the wind soughing over the cliffs. “Help _me_? With what?” 

“To see that all this isn’t what you decided it is. That it’s dangerous.” 

He couldn’t explain how he knew this. He could see the danger in Mal’s feverish gaze, in her insistence on going back to limbo again and again, while their other projects gathered dust. 

“You’re right,” Mal said, in nearly her usual, soft, calm voice. “It _is_ dangerous. But I do not need you to save me or to act as my living totem, Arthur. Just because something isn’t real, that doesn’t make it truly unreal.” 

They were supposed to be scientists, explorers, and here she was talking in riddles. 

“What does that even mean?” Arthur demanded.

She shrugged, like it was obvious. Like she delighted in making him try to catch up with what she’d already figured out. “If it feels real, if you believe it, if it is the only thing that makes sense...” 

“Mal. Stop. That is a dangerous way to think.” 

He was repeating himself. Once before, he had told her no and she’d looked at him with contempt. 

“It’s only dangerous to those without imagination, who are afraid of their own minds,” Mal said, turned her back on him, and walked away, along the beach, toward the city she had started to build. 

Arthur watched her leave him, in this place where there was nowhere to go but wherever they built – except building was not his talent. 

*

A few weeks later, Miles beckoned Arthur over and pointed out a man talking to Mal: “I’ve found another. Marvelously talented. I’m a lucky old sod. Soon you’ll have two of them to keep in line, eh Arthur?”


End file.
